Please note I am no expert I may do things wrong and there is probably better ways of doing this.

I will start with creating this Hammer in Sketchup:



I am hoping one of the Blender Guru's a 3D Max Guru, a Wings 3D Guru and any other modelling package Guru will copy me and do the same model in their preferred applications.

I think this would go a long way in prospective artists making a uniformed decision on what kind of workflows are available and how to make a basic entity.

It will be important that it is the same model done in the different packages just to show how things can be done in various suites if we all did different models I don't think it would work.



Would anyone be willing to help me with this and is there any interest for this ? I am no expert I fumble through but I do not mind showing how I do things.

Please find attached Part 1 of the Tutorial also bear in mind i am by no means an expert and i myself learn new things everyday there are a lot more experienced people out there than me.

I primarily use Sketchup it is not the ideal Application for game ready assets but it is very easy to pick up and could lead you on to more advanced better suited programs.

Part 2 of this series will be Unwrapping your model in Ultimate Unwrap 3D.

I hope you find this helpful and useful. Thank you for reading and watching



Part 2 Unwrapping in UU3D



Part 3 Texturing in Quixel

I will be watching,allways good to see how other people work.live and learn every day .

Dave

Does the clean up tool add edges to remove ngons? Because i counted at least 6 ngons in that model before you did the cleanup. Just wondering if the cleanup tool fixes that for you.

When i can breath properly, i'll use the hammer model in my blender to SP to GG video, that way people can make a good comparison.

No you are quite right I have made a stupid mistake, I will do another video pointing out where I have gone wrong, Belidos is correct NGONS are no good in models.


New Video Posted, deals with the nasty NGON's

What is an Ngon?
If you're unfamiliar with what an ngon is let's go over a very quick review so you can understand this question a little more. An ngon is a face or polygon that is made up of five or more sides or edges connected by five or more vertices. Anything over a quad (4 sides) is considered an ngon.
What is a Triangle?
The triangle is something you probably already understand and that is a face that consists of just 3 sides or edges connected by 3 vertices. Right in the middle of these two polygons is the quad, which is a face or polygon made up of four sides or edges connected by four vertices. This is the polygon type you've probably heard is the one you should strive to create. However, as you're adding edge loops, resolution and shaping your geometry into what you want to make it's almost impossible not to run into a few triangles or ngons. So why should you spend the time to re-route your topology and create a quad-based mesh? Let's go over a few of the main reasons to avoid ngons and triangles.
Deformations
Ngons typically cause a lot of issues when deforming the model. If your model is going to be passed down the pipeline to be rigged and animated, then a quad-based topology is a must. Triangles can also cause this issue. While triangles are a little more lenient and not as bad as ngons, they still can cause some issue at animation time. Topology that isn't clean means a model that is going to be sent back to you for fixes. While you may be working on your own project, and you're the modeler, rigger and animator you certainly make your own rules during the modeling stage. But you'll quickly find out first hand the issues that arise as you try to animate an ngon heavy model.
Render Issues
Ngons and triangles can also cause some strange issues at render time. While everything may look good in the viewport, once rendered you may notice some very strange artifacts happening. The only way to really avoid this is to go back and clean up the ngons on your model.
Smoothing
Ngons and triangles both cause issues when trying to smooth a model. The extra vertices and edges can cause some very strange bumpiness in the model that would otherwise not occur if the model was made up of quads.
Quads Are Accepted in Every Area of the Industry
A very important reason for avoiding ngons and triangles is that quads are really the industry-accepted polygon. There are certainly instances where ngons can be used, for example on a perfectly flat surface, and times when triangles simply can't be avoided, or maybe you can hide the triangles at a place that the viewer is never going to see them. But you should try to spend the time to clean up your model and re-route any problem solving polygon types into quads.

like I said at the beginning I am only a beginner sorry for the mistake

No need to be sorry, i wasn't trying to call you out about the ngons, just asking about the tool, and what it does. We're all learning, i'm learning as much from you as you are form others

There are no stupid mistakes, only learning experiences, if we didn't make mistakes we wouldn't ever learn.

I've been practicing the hammer at work for when i do my video, here's how it will look so far (in blender with basic colours, no textures yet), i've made the handle a little too long, and forgot to cap it, but i think it's ok so far:



Edit: Some additional info about tri's, tri's are perfectly acceptable in game engines (most of them actually convert quads to tri's on import), in fact for sculpted models such as characters and cloth etc they're preferred because you don't get such prominent edges as you do with quads and you can get a smoother sculpt.

Never apologise for trying to help,I think a pm pointing it out might have been tha way to go here .

Dave

I have redone the above video correctly now (I hope)

Good work mate, well explained and presented.

Thank you I hope someone finds it useful, Part 2 just uploaded

To answer your question, yes substance painter treats "groups" (objects in blender) as separate meshes and creates a separate set of textures for each, it also does that if you assign different materials to the model before bringing it into substance, and it has no atlas texture feature, so the way to get around it (i will explain in detail in my video when i do it) is to make all the groups/objects into one single object with one single material, then in vertex paint mode paint each area you want to be a different material a different colour, then when you bring it into substance painter you can use those vertex colours to bake an ID mask you can use to mask areas by colour to paint on, that way you can still mask each material area, and have a single atlas texture fr the whole model.

When it comes to the substance painter part, i'm only going to be brief on how to paint etc, my main goal will be to show how to use the ID mask to apply filters, and how to create a texture export preset for gameguru so you can just work on your model, then just hit export and have everything will come out with the correct textures and naming convention automagically.

Really enjoyed watching those m8 really nice seeing how a different package works and that was really informative, ive used sketchup before and thats propted me to open it up again and have a look Cheers m8

I took the liberty of awarding you a badge for taking the time to write these for us

thank you I am stuck for words

Good, because I was just about to kidnap someone close to you and demand a ransom of one user of the month badge for GraPhiX :p

And considering I've had that badge taunting me for nearly three months now, it's time it was passed on lol

Nice one GraPhiX , should we call you sir now .
Taking the batton over from Belidos .
You guys deserve something for helping others.

Dave

Certainly, thanks GraPhiX.
I was under the notion that less polygons is beter, hence the models i made up to now contain no hidden faces nor extra lines and thus extra faces which you drew in order to have green and blue.
My models might be full with ngons so thanks and thank you Belidos

Part 3 Texturing is now available, sorry for all the mistakes hopefully my Tutorials will get better, I have not edited any of my videos I think the mistakes I make are important for you to learn

once again thank you for the user of the month I am very humbled.

I hope we do have a Blender version and at least a 3DMax version here at some point

What are you using to record your screen mate? I'm using Bandicam, but i'm having issues, when i have the "show cursor" option enabled it shows the cursor, but it's offset by a centimeter or so to the left and above where the cursor really is, it almost looks as if it's positioning it as if the one screen is both my screens if you know what i mean.

Hi Belidos

I am using Bandicam 4.0.0.1331 I have it set to record 'Display 1' I have 3 displays, I don't seem to have the problem you describe, it is a fully registered version not the free one.

Hmn hat's strange, mine is the latest update, and it's full version registered, but it looks different to yours.

I had problems with Bandicam until i ran it as administrator,that put it right for me.

Dave

I've worked out what it was, there was a newer version, but it's a such a different version it doesn't auto update, you have to reinstall the new version. I'm uploading the first video (modelling, unwrapping, and preparing for substance painter) as I type.

Excellent looking forward to watching it Thank you Belidos

if you like I can add your video to the first post of this thread so that they are all together at the beginning think it would be easier if they were all in one post, obviously I will make sure you are credited for it

OK here we go, please don't laugh, I have a cold lol. Hopefully I don't waffle too much, and you can understand what i'm saying

In this first video I explain the basics of modelling, unwrapping, and preparing a model to be painted in Substance painter, ready to import into GameGurus new PBR system.



My second video, which I will try to film by the weekend (if my throat holds out), will explain how to set up the texture channels in substance panel to match the texture sets used b y GameGuru, how to paint using the ID colour mask, and how to create a texture export pre-set that outputs the textures needed for GameGuru, so you don't have to keep setting it up every time you use it.

Thanks guys ,I have picked up a few tips from all of these.never stop learning .

Dave

Belidos thank you so much that was excellent, I will try that in the morning with blender

Hope it helps, i think i got the model about the same as yours, at least in looks. I know it's about 100 poly's higher than yours, that's because the cylinder i used for the handle has a lot more face loops than yours, i could have reduced that, but i was trying to get it as smooth as possible. There were also a few areas i could have gone for a lower poly count, for example the top of the handle cap, i could have removed a single edge loop and reduced it by about 30 poly's, but as i sad, it was more about getting a quick model ready for substance painter than showing how to refine a model, and to be honest 100 poly's is nothing really.

Although substance has its own Alphas like those you were using to add detail to the edges of the hammer, i've decided to download a couple of patterns from the interwebs, and make my own Alpha from them for the detail, Substance is great because you can import things like Alphas just by dragging them in to the tool shelf and choosing a couple of options, which i will demonstrate in the second video, all you need to do to make an alpha mask is to create a black and white image, where black is basically full transparency, and white is the actual detail.

looking forward to the introduction to Substance Painter, its on my Birthday Wish list LOL don't think anyone would buy it for me though ha ha ha

If i could afford to i would, unfortunately I've just spent my last two grand on a new bike because my old piagio is getting a little too old lol

LOL I meant one of my siblings I have 4 daughters 1 son and 4 Grandchildren

I'm sure if they pooled what they would have spent on you they would have more than enough

@Graphix - Substance Painter usually goes on special during the two major Steam sales, so if you wait until late December for the holiday sale you can probably get it at a good price. If you're lucky you may even get it on sale during the Halloween sale at the end of October.

Yup, that's how i got it, it was either a summer sale or a black Friday sale, it was 80% off so i only ended up paying about £27 for it

You could allways subscribe to it and if you don’t get on with it just drop it and go back to Quixil

Dave

Do they still do the subscriptions? I thought they had dropped the subscription system a while back.

yes the subscription for the indie pack is $19.00 per month after 12 months you can buy it outright for $49.00

You get all 3 tools with that,do you get them if you buy it ?
https://www.allegorithmic.com/buy/indie
Dave

Yes you get all three if you buy the pack for $299, which is about the same as you would be paying via subscription.

Good if you don't have the money right away, and it's something you will use regularly.

But to be honest, from what i understand, Substance Designer isn't needed, it's just a tool that automates what you can already do with B2M and Substance Painter. Basically you can use B2M to create all the different texture maps you will need fr your base texture, then you put them Substance Painter, and using the layering system you can create your material, then right click it and save it as an sbar material. All substance does it basically shrinks all those steps into one handy app, with a few bells and whistles.

I'm just waiting for B2M to go on sale so i can get that cheaper too

its my Birthday on the 23rd so I will wait until the end of this month and see if they have a sale, if not I will subscribe and buy after 12 months, like you say I will probably use it all the time and having both will give me plenty of options

I have just started to create Barrels will do about 20 then move onto crates hopefully things wont change much for the workflow in the beta once finished I will send them to Lee see if he will add them to the release it will give a start for users whom don't have any PBR assets

Not sure what to do now,wait for a sale or subscribe and play with it now.havent used it since I last downloaded and then I only played with it and didn’t realy get into it,



I am playing with containers to,trying to get the hang of it.





Dave

they are brilliant Dave

LOL I have only just noticed but have you seen what pops up when you render in Quixel

Haha, that's funny!

Crates look grate (yes i know it's spelled wrong, that was intentional ) Grananda

Yes that made me smile to

Did you no when working on your normal in Quixel if you have your mode l open in UU3d when you save your normal file it will show in UU3d,so you can check how it looks.



I spell everything wrong

Dave

yes I did know but unfortunately it can cause memory issues having both open lol I found that out the hard way

Yeah i have memory issues to, nothing to do with multiple programs open at once, i just forg..... what was i talking about?

I see,i maxed out on memory when it was going cheap.
These are good

SP/Quixel 325 Hardsurface Height/Alpha + Tutorials

https://gumroad.com/l/paTzK?recommended_by=skdgX

Dave

thanks Dave just purchased

Thanks for these tuts.
hope you continue with these tuts they are very informative,
nice to see members helping out and taking the time to make these
videos, especially because they are GG orientated,
keep up the great work, and thank you.

@ Granada
thanks for the link just purchased
most of them, nice find,

You are very welcome I'm glad someone found use of them, I do plan to do more Tutorials not had much feedback really on these first bunch so I'm not sure what to do a tut on.

I hope others have found them helpful and don't forget Belidos is going to give us a workflow from Substance Painter which will be very interesting